Lisette Model is an unsurpassed introduction to one of the twentieth century's most significant photographers—a woman whose searing images and eloquent teachings deeply influenced her students Diane Arbus, Larry Fink, and many others.

To mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of her death in 1983, Aperture is reissuing this classic 1979 monograph. The first book ever published on Model, it is being reissued in the original oversized trim and with the original distinctive design by Marvin Israel, with an updated chronology and bibliography.

The monograph contains more than fifty of Model's greatest images, from the rich idlers on Nice's Promenade des Anglais to the sad, funny, and often eccentric inhabitants of New York's subterranean haunts. As Berenice Abbott said in her preface, "One of the first reactions when looking at Model's pictures is that they make you feel good. You recognize them as real because real people express a bit of the universal humanity in all of us."

LISETTE MODEL (1901–1983) was born in Vienna and spent several years in Paris before moving to New York in 1938. Three years later she began a twelve-year association with Harper’s Bazaar as a freelance photographer. Starting in 1951 she also taught at the New School for Social Research and in private classes and workshops.